


lost in the fallout.

by eoghainy



Category: Fallout (Video Games)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-08-24 14:45:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16642226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eoghainy/pseuds/eoghainy
Summary: drabbles taken & updated from original ficlet.





	1. reignited.

**Author's Note:**

> drabbles taken & updated from original ficlet.

Gazing at her, his  _mother_ , there was difficulty in believing that she had finally found him. How many years had he spent, holed up in his office, staring at a torn and frayed photo of his family. His smiling mother; her hair red and untamed, sliding to her shoulders in ringlets, amber eyes bright with love as she stared down at her tiny son, so small and frail. An arm was wrapped around her belonging to his father. Dark hair was swept across his forehead, glasses hiding those bright blue eyes he had come to know so well. He had gazed at this photo for so long, studied it in and out, until it became something he could recall by memory alone.

So, when he stood, awkwardly facing his mother, he found that the photo had not done her justice at all. Her time in the Commonwealth had harshened her previously soft features, making her look animalistic. A bruise kept her left eye black, whilst a fresh, pink scar stretched over her cheekbone all the way up to her eyebrow. Another clean scar ripped her smooth skin on the side of her neck. Her lips were not pulled into a smile, but torn down in a disgusted frown. She stared at him like a person stared at a bug: hateful. Disgusted. Horrified. Dirt smudged her unblemished skin, as did multiple, tiny lacerations that she had come to receive from her battle with the Super Mutants. He swallowed against the lump in his throat.

Oh, yes, he had been watching her for a long time. Watching his mother tear her way through the Commonwealth to find her son had been hard. He longed to shed his title of Father and go to her, to curl his tall, fragile body up in her strong arms and sob about how he had missed her. Yet he stayed away, leaving clues for her to follow. Did she really think that it would be that easy to get a Courser Chip from one of  _his_ Coursers?  _Please_. 

Never did he think that she would actually find a way to get inside the Institute. Once, he had even prayed that she would fail, that she would run into a wall that proved to be too much even for her and give up. It was this very reunion that he had been dreading. He wanted her to have never come for him, to live out her life in the Commonwealth, meet a man that she could love and forget about him. Though it was a very selfish thought, and he hated himself for even thinking it, he couldn’t help it. 

Yet his mother continuously stared at him as he explained the complexity of the Human Synths to her, carefully reprimanding himself every time he saw that he was losing her. His intelligence outranked hers, that much was clear. Even though she struggled to keep up, she gave him the chance to speak rather than killing him on the spot like he had predicted she would. This was good, this was progress.

Words became lodged in his throat as he hesitated, knowing that his words did nothing to ease the maternal wounds that she bore. As he continued to ramble on about how he was a father to those Synths, as much as she was a mother to Shaun, his voice broke upon his own name. Never before had he referred to himself in the third person. It felt bitter, almost as if he were lying. A part of him longed to scream, to just spill out all of the pain that he had been carrying all these years, but she wasn’t ready for that. She wasn’t ready to know that all of her hard work was for naught; her son was fully grown, and almost at the end of his life. He’d outlive her. He must have said something curious to her, for her demeanor towards him changed.

Her mind was quick, seeing a show a faint sense of realization had already begun to dawn upon her freckled features. Though she did faintly wince in pain, due to the crinkling of her black eye, she stared at him as if she were really  _seeing_ him for the first time. “No . . .”

That voice, the one that brought back memories of  _her_  made him close his eyes. She knew. She needed to hear the words still, but she  _knew_.

“Yes. I am your son . . . I am Shaun.”


	2. product of fear.

Standing on the roof of the C.I.T. building was nothing short of disappointing. Sharp, dark eyes were scanning amongst the ruins of the Commonwealth, feeling nothing but disappointment rising within him. This was worse than he had expected; he had wanted to believe that people on the surface were making a change and making it so that the Commonwealth could be  _better_ , but there was nothing. No one cared. No one wanted to make a change. No one  _wanted_ the Institute to make a change so that those whom were living, could continue doing as such.

A withered hand moved to scrub the pads of his fingers across his face, eyes tightly closing. He was exhausted; the few cancer treatments that he had been permitting to be used on him really took a toll. His days were wearing thin. Soon, he would be bedridden, unable to lead the Institute. Or, do _anything_ really. There were a few things that needed to be taken care of before he did. The one more worrying thing was he needed to find someone to take his place. Though he did trust the ones he worked alongside, none of them seemed to share his passion, and he didn’t want for any of his hard work to go to waste.

With a bright blue flash of light and a sudden _crack_ , his mother appeared behind him. She looked exhausted; the battle at Bunker Hillmust have taken a lot out of her. Her face was pinched with stress, and she could hardly meet his gaze. She had never been good at lying, never been good at hiding her emotions. Shaun liked to believe he was like her, but he had learned far more from Kellogg than he liked to admit.

He assumed that he looked far from happy.

“Care to tell me what happened with the Synths at Bunker Hill?” Though his voice was controlled, rage was seeping through the cracks. The objective of the mission was to bring the lost Synths back, make sure that they were there to keep them under control. Yet, he had been told that there had been no sign of them, even though all of their sources told otherwise. This reeked of his mother’s handiwork.

“We were ambushed.” Her words sounded as if they were rehearsed. Flat. “The Brotherhood of Steel showed up. They, combined with the Railroad, made the rescue difficult.”

“Do you understand how ridiculous you sound?” Shaun snapped, losing his patience. “You are hardly credible these days. Do you see how I can’t trust you? I assume that you let those Synths go out of weakness.”

“They were afraid!” She burst out, her gaze glimmering with intensity. “They were real people, and they were  _afraid_.”

Shaun lost it. “They were far from afraid!” He yelled, his voice cracking. He felt weak, like he was about to collapse at any moment, but stubbornly he refused to give in. Anger drove him now. “They are programed to feel things like that; don't you understand that? I can’t believe you could be so stupid. You are far from an asset to the Institute. You're a _liability_. I love you, as my mother, but I cannot afford to keep you around here.”

His mother’s gaze narrowed dangerously. “ _I_ am the parent, Shaun. You aren’t. I have been alive longer than you have, and you know what? You have no  _idea_ what is going on out here. You have been underground all of your life. They deserve to have some control over their own lives, don’t they?” 

 _This was it_ , he realized. This was where he was going to have to let his mother go. Shaun’s gaze narrowed icily, harsh words spilling from his tongue. “I don’t need you to be my parent anymore. You are destroying what I had built for the Institute; it is high time that you leave. You are not permitted to enter the Institute, or get involved in Institute business again. I had high hopes for you, mother. But you have disappointed me, as has this Commonwealth. Goodbye, mother.”

Another flash of blue light and a sharp _crack_ sounded before Shaun was gone. 


	3. synthetic.

“So this is what it’s supposed to be like?” Kellogg asked, stretching his tingling fingertips. Dull yellow hues examined the scientist before him, and he frowned. “I don’t feel anything.”

“You will soon,” she cautioned. “You won’t be so . . . You know, _you_ , for long.” She let her hands fall to her sides. “Take a look at yourself.” She invited, and Kellogg didn’t know if she was being serious or not.

Suspiciously staring at her, he lurched to his feet, finding that his hand had to shoot out and grasp the steel table beside him. She made a noise that resembled a chuckle, and Kellogg hissed, taking a moment to find his balance before striding towards the pristine mirror. Fuck her for laughing at him.

He had asked those at the Institute to change him into the most unstoppable creature; a Synth. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to die, it was more like . . . he wanted to make it interesting, not as easy as it would have been if he were human. One false hand moved to touch his cheek, looking so real, and a sick grin split across his previously emotionless features. He didn’t have that godawful scar anymore, nor any of the blemishes he had come to grow up with. No, he looked _normal_ , all except for those narrowed, piss yellow eyes.

 _Good._ He didn’t want to pass as human. Let them all know that he was _better_ than they were.

Joints cracked as Kellogg stretched his new body out, aware that it was only his subconscious that had entered this false body. It was going to take some getting used to, but he knew that this was what he was meant to be. Human had never felt right. Being a monster had.

“This will do _just_ fine.”


End file.
